Russia and China in Alliance Conditions

MELKULANGARA BHADRAKUMAR

Russia and China in Alliance Conditions

Three things stand out in the remarks made by the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday in the context of Russia’s forthcoming Vostok-2018 military exercise in the Trans-Baikal Region in East Siberia during September 11-15.

At the obvious level, Peskov was speaking from the picturesque southwestern city of Omsk where he was accompanying President Vladimir Putin. Nothing that Peskov says can be unintentional and his remarks from Omsk carried added resonance, because he was also speaking from a vantage point in Russian history – from a garrison town founded by the Siberian Cossacks four centuries ago.

Second, Peskov was speaking about the forthcoming Vostok-2018, which is already being noticed in the international opinion, including in western media, as a military exercise of strategic significance. Peskov indirectly referred to the NATO’s belligerent military posturing toward Russia when he said that Vostok-2018 is taking place in the backdrop of “the current international situation, which is frequently quite aggressive and unfriendly for our country.”

Only a few hours before Peskov spoke, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu had said that the drills will be unprecedented in their scope and will involve about 300,000 troops and over 1,000 aircraft. The Vostok-2018 will focus on “traditional security” (read wars, external territorial aggression) as against “non-traditional security” (terrorism, separatism, religious extremism, etc.) and it is billed as the biggest Russian exercise since the famous Zapad-81 drills. Of course, the former Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact allies had participated in the Zapad-81.

Taking all of the above into account, it was Peskov’s remark regarding China’s participation in the Vostok-2018 strategic drills that acquires salience. Peskov said, “This (China’s participation) speaks about the expansion of interaction of the two allies in all the spheres.”

Now, this is a profoundly significant choice of words. In all these decades since the 1960s, it is impossible to recall a top Kremlin official characterizing Russia and China as “two allies in all the spheres.” The common idiom is that they are “partners”. Officially, the Sino-Russian relations are described as “comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination.”

But there is no big surprise that the Sino-Russian relations have reached alliance conditions. The fashionable western interpretation is that the Kiev Euromaidan (2014) and the sanctions against Russia that followed had pushed Russia reluctantly into a Chinese embrace. But this is more of a self-serving western notion, since Russia’s “pivot to China” by far predates the regime change in Ukraine and had much to do with Moscow’s strategic focus on the global shift in power to the East and about turning Russia into a hub of intra-Asian trade and cooperation……More Here

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